A field notebook gathered from earlier blogs, from 2007 to the present: system administration, compiling software, Linux, networking, security cameras, VMware, containers, data, and the practical details that make systems work.
Git BBQ gives coding agents durable project context, ADR scaffolding, validation, and explicit Git habits. Add Long-Running Tasks and Codex gets a much better way to carry careful work across turns.
In vibrant new TechniBW Also called, "what to do when encountering the following Error: No matching host key type found. Their offer: ssh-rsa,ssh-dss" ?? I've got a super old UAP-LR I still manage with an old version of the Unifi Controller locally, since I barely use WIFI for a…
Well, not \that\ new, but still ... different, and decidedly unconventional... I keep telling myself I've gotta write about the Hikvision setup I put together at my friend's fast food restaurant/mini dinosaur theme park, because it's so unusual, I doubt many people have done it…
Virtual network flow chart details stunningly-performant namespace network: Bypass4NetNS I've been keeping an eye on nerdctl. While it's still a little trickier than Docker or Podman for commands to work consistently, there's fascinating innovation happening under its hood. One…
Pack and dedupe your files automatically! Unfortunately, this hasn't gotten as much attention as I think it should, but vdo volumes are now officially supported as in-tree modules in kernel 6.9 and newer. If you don't know what vdo volumes are yet, check this out (they're really…
You're welcome flatpak search doesn't really work, my terminal is always too narrow for the output not to truncate the name of the app, when I need the full thing in order to install it. But flatpak search -v is generally unreadable, as the descriptions are invariably longer tha…
Blowing up old myths about using compression for disk images I've been making these images of my hard drives using fsarchiver for about 6 months, and one of the most amazing things I've discovered through all of it is how tiny .raw.zst images get when you run them through a comp…
Up and running in about half an hour! I've been aware of quickemu for 4-5 years now, and just went out looking for it again since I thought it'd be helpful for a project on endpoint management with Microsoft Intune. I'd like to see if I can't set up a few devices running Windows…
Yes, really. You know the error messages you get any time you're trying to pipe the output of apt to something? They're kind of irritating since they don't help in any meaningful way. e.g. you might want to reduce apt search results to packages that contain a string either in th…
Get ready for some cross-distro Linux synesthesia Can you spot Jimi Hendrix? Installing Ubuntu to Thin-lvm in a Very Arch-Like Way This is a way you can install a Debian-like OS on thin-lvm. It's 2026, and installers I've tried still don't have options for thin-lvm, as far as I'…
So, I wasn't so sure how soon I should write about this, but I have a fiber connection here in Seattle I'm pretty excited about. For the past decade I'd been living in Olympia, WA, where Comcast is the only game in town, and upload speeds are hampered by only having 4 channels a…
Because .bat file (amirite?) I thought I'd throw this up real quick, because I am constantly using for loops in bash during normal command traversal, but I am not as familiar about how to do them in Windows - off the top, I can recall cmd has for loops, they omit done, use paren…
The lovely, new, barebones Windows release: IoT Enterprise LTSC 2024 I love Proxmox, but I've always preferred to have a more modular style. There's a lot to be said about 'batteries included' hypervisors with all the bells and whistles all set up for you automatically. But what…
Explaining the feels: XFS + Thin LVM is on the left, ZFS is on the right I found this screenshot from a couple days ago, but it illustrates something I've known subjectively for a long time now: ZFS is the mother of all sequential read filesystems, but it's quite a bit "slower"…
Adorable website throws confetti in celebration of your GitHub join date: Useful, since after 30 days join date is difficult to find Octocat Birthday celebration site unsurprisingly located on... wait for it... GitHub Pages: https://nomangul.github.io/octocat-day/ I thought this…
Kyun-Chan, a shy, Japanese pika disguised as a deer There's lots of great backup tools out there - borg, rdiffbackup, bareos, zfs and btrfs send/receive, pvesync, etc. and the cutest mascotted backup program ever, of course, pikabackup (it's adorable!) all with their own traits…
Cartographic chart showing 8-year total of money used to lobby Washington state residents coming from outside the state I was looking at datasets on data.wa.gov to see what might be fun for a project, and I came across public info disclosing the amount paid to employ WA state lo…
Looks like I'm not the only one who noticed Does anyone else sense the irony? Yes, Arch Linux is available from the Microsoft Store, and no, I'm not kidding. Go ahead and see for yourself: https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9mznmnksm73x?hl=en-us&gl=US My immediate reaction when I…
How can grep clear the clutter obstructing our goals? This is a little beginner command-line demonstration for finding the results you need most. A lot of the time in the command line, a simple ls can return way more than any one person can reasonably deal with. Most people know…
Quick little command line kung fu job with this parser called column It's in the util-linux package, which, if I am remembering correctly, is included by default in basically any release outside of netboot and cloud images this demonstrates why it's included: It's required by ba…
Obsidian's Mind Map Feature makes use of the MarkMapJS library: https://markmap.js.org/ There's always issues here or there trying to incorporate container apps with the desktop, due to their sandboxed nature and subsequent lack of out-of-the-box feature parity with their distro…
Hasn't everybody deleted some stuff in the command line, wishing they had a way to get it back? Well, by default there are no do-overs. That's where rmw comes in: rmw creates a trash can for your command line, so even after you delete some files (as long as you use it), you shou…
I missed KDE... best of both worlds? UPDATE: I tried to implement these instructions on a new installation of KDE, and realized I made some mistakes: The kwin accelerator that should be used is Overview, not ExposeAll as I had originally thought, because ExposeAll doesn't allow…
Brings back memories of being read the Ugly Duckling This is not an issue with any Linux distro specifically, but with all distros in general. If anyone out there's had this issue, I'm sure you've shared my pain. I'd struggled with getting flatpaks to follow the (dark) system th…
Epson Powerlite 2250u Projector Setting the Projector Up The main things to keep in mind when choosing where to put the projector: Has a straight shot at the screen Guests are comfortable and safe (no tripping or blinding hazards) Positioned so can be connected to sound system (…
Mackie Onyx 8 Mixer (top view, photograph) Mackie Onyx 8 Mixer (top view, line drawing) If you're a seasoned pro, and you just want the broad overview, please see TL;DR. If you're still learning, please briefly read this primer on audio cable types from /r/coolguides: /r/coolgui…
Plymouth Room Plymouth room has a stationary sound system built into the walls (microphone connectors) and ceiling (speakers), with an amplifier lives in middle kitchen in a box above a prep station. Briefly, here's what all of those look like: 6 speakers in the ceiling: so you…
All your .cpl are belong to us (all 6 of them, woah) I've been working on moving to Windows Server Core for my DCs, and getting adjusted to PowerShell has been slightly daunting, as the only CLI I'm really familiar with is Unix-based, and, while there are similarties to be sure,…
Concurrent local uploads - not possible when using local file (also no ominous "don't refresh your window" warning) I haven't gotten very far with Harvester yet, having taken down the first cluster I built to re-purpose resources, but I thought I'd explore it again for running s…
Neofetch doesn't find much when you have no DE/WM/DM or icons, but tries its best... Some people are charging for Fedora in the Windows store. I guess it's good work if you can get it (?) Charging for someone else's free OS seems kinda lame to me, but I don't mind getting my han…
Ripped everything out of one of these cases to make a router I've noticed lately this blog has turned into being less about the info I'm trying to share with people, and more of a collection of me rambling on about the stuff I've fixed or put together. I'm not sure what's wrong…
One of the many logos from the many articles discussing Fedora 33's stunning move to finally ditch XFS, after their unfortunate habit of talking much trash about btrfs for a number of years Hey I ran into an issue where I had an unpopulated grub menu on a Fedora 36 Workstation i…
Picture depicts Houdinis as books disappearing from a library, while our problem depicts missing libraries themselves. Kinda makes you think, doesn't it? Hey, I just came across an issue many people have been experiencing after upgrading VMware Workstation to 16.2.1 in Windows.…
My system runs ZFS and lately has been dropping to the initramfs / busybox prompt on boot. I had a hard time finding a fleshed-out guide on how to mount ZFS in a live environment for performing disaster recovery tasks like chroot and grub repair, so I thought I'd write something…
I meant to post this over a month ago, but got sidetracked, so I'm coming in a little late. Unfortunately, it looks like even though Fedora 36 has officially been released, the dpdk 22.03 rpms still aren't available. Back when I compiled these, I realized there were no official…
TL;DR: drag the icon from the shell:AppsFolder over to the shell:startup folder! I am building a dedicated TV viewing VM for HDHomeRun View using Windows IoT 2021 LTSC, so I can watch TV while using a computer running Linux with the smallest possible KVM-QEMU VM I can possibly p…
I haven't had time to write lately, but I have made a few notable posts on message boards I thought I'd include here for reference: https://www.truenas.com/community/threads/adding-slog-freenas-will-not-boot-with-m-2-optane-800p-passthrough-in-esxi-6-7-vm.79206/#post-674140 http…
If so, wouldn't you like both their keyboard shortcuts to be consistent? I personally am using both Visual Studio Code and Sublime Text 3 on my main dev laptop. Once I got used to all the nice features in a pseudo-IDE text editor like VS Code, it became hard to go back to editin…
Note: This article has some interesting WSL-centric material, like how to: Set up bridge networking without Hyper-V Find the UWP Ubuntu executable to run Linux commands outside of a WSL terminal Create automatic startup tasks without systemd init system Expose your (domain-enabl…
Grilling a Linksys. Delicious... I am testing certbot locally with Create-React-App, but I'm using WSL2. Little did I know, the networking for Ubuntu in WSL2 is a little strange when coming from your typical systemd-network, NetworkManager, ifupdown, \ Apparently, the networking…
Dinosaurs are cute I thought this was neat, but I got the info from a site that presented it in a way that was a bit difficult to decipher, so I wanted to pass it on in a presentation that is easier to understand. If you're not using CloneZilla, you're definitely missing out. It…
Hub project source code root directory So I've been liking msys2 so far. I've replaced the default git install with msys2's utilities in C:\tools\msys64\usr\bin and they seem to work from Windows command prompt just fine, except for bash, which complains of cygwin1.dll mismatch,…
Continuing along in my series about how to make Windows more palatable for Linux users, one thing that's been more difficult to find a workaround for is the man command For about an hour, I went on a wild goose chase for some sort of alternative in Windows, and found relatively…
Ok, so obviously if you hate Windows, you probably just shouldn't be using it. But what if you love the way Linux operates, but have a plethora of Windows-only applications you have to have at your fingertips at any moment's notice? Here are some ways the discerning Linux user w…
OK, so practically everyone who uses Linux has come to this menacing prompt at least once or twice. Typically, unless you're a seasoned sysadmin, it's a harbinger of death, requiring more than you bargained for to be able to use the computer that day without dire intervention. B…
Parting Hangouts is not sweet sorrow... Some of us have been using Hangouts for ages. Essentially since Google recommended we switch from texting with Google Voice way back May of 2013. Well, now they've dropped the hammer again, and said we have to switch back to Google Voice,…
I've noticed this a couple times in the last week - I had an iKVM window open on my Supermicro host, trying to control the ESXi DCUI, and the menu wouldn't stay open. It's very frustrating. I don't have a physical monitor hooked up to any of my hosts, so this is a pretty importa…
VMware Robot does a little dance Update April 2021: I noticed VMware Workstation 16 in Ubuntu tends to install kernel modules fine through its GUI now, so a lot of this info about how to compile and install vmmon and vmnet is probably obsolete. But since it may be useful to some…
If you've ever run into this, it's a real bummer. I encountered it after using rsync to clone a vm. At the outset, I want to say either using vm -> manage -> clone or file -> export to OVF are both easier options, but if you've already copied a vm by hand, you can try this out:…
Want to use grep or vim from your powershell env? Now you can! OK, I just stumbled across the coolest thing. Occasionally I use PowerShell because it's the easiest way to get batch processes accomplished on a Windows computer, or sometimes the only way to implement a feature (e.…
I am heartened to see podman becoming more comfortable on Ubuntu, since although I'm excited about a lot of the software coming from RHEL's massive portfolio of acquisitions, I still prefer Ubuntu's support length and update schedule, and find its commands and structure more fam…
Shiny new Kubuntu 20.04 dev platform So, I develop using NodeJS, and I use Windows. Anyone who uses both together and has used Linux as a dev platform has probably realized the Windows version is a little lackluster and has edge configuration issues that make it a pain. So I was…
Ubuntu logo VMWare Workstation on Ubuntu requires another step to run. Sometimes the installer will install the kernel modules it requires in the installer, other times it won't. There's another step to the setup after running the installer that might as well be documented as pa…
Interesting thing happened to me today. I had to do some work on one of my ESXi 6.7 hosts, so I powered it off (which is something I rarely ever do). I had just done some static configuration of ipv6 on my domain controllers, provisioned DNSSEC, etc. so I was playing with a rela…
pkgsrc is a package manager and port tree, kind of like FreeBSD ports and pkg combined. Messing around with my Ubuntu 19.10 rpool installation (ZFS is offered by default in the desktop installer now), and I couldn't help but think to myself, "gee, it sure would be cool if the AR…
Update: Not sure when this happened but I was checking the requirements for FS on Linux at Dropbox.com and apparently they DO support BTRFS once again. So the process outlined in this post is no longer necessary. See announcement: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/19/07/22/153…
PSA: Stop using password login for root on your router! NOW!!! OK, now that I got your attention, here's how I did it in Git Bash (MINGW64) on Windows LTSC. I promise this is QUICK and EASY, so there's NO EXCUSE not to do it. Open your terminal and run ssh-keygen - you don't nee…
Turnkey Linux's VM packages are available as iso, vmdk, qcow2, tar, and Docker images So I've been playing with some of the Turnkey Linux VMs, which are nice a lightweight Debian Linux OS core packaged with purpose-built software. They run lighttpd out of the box and have web po…
I saw this on a German web site called speicher.de and I thought it was pretty significant so I thought I'd share a copy of the translation to English The Asrock J4105-ITX is a useful low-power build that has been confirmed to work as an ESXi IGD GPU passthrough computer with 4K…
editing bashrc in nano using a mingw64 (git-bash) terminal window on Windows 1809 LTSC Make your Windows experience more nerdy! I tend to notice Windows users fall into a few major categories: Unaware any OS besides Windows exists Uses Windows because that's what they're most co…
Happy new camera watching garden grow at my modest home This review is for the Anpviz IPC-B850W-D 5MP@15FPS security camera w/ mic and Micro-SD card support. View on amazon Full disclosure: I purchased this camera and was later reimbursed for writing this review. However, I will…
Resizing an APFS container via diskutil terminal command Disclaimer: Sorry for the phone pics of my screen, I was using an installer disk for this procedure and there was no screenshot feature. I'm migrating a MacOS install but the source drive is 256GB and the destination is 25…
Gratuitous Google Image Rip OK, so I've been fighting it, but I decided learning WordPress is a necessary evil. Supposedly according to website tech stats WordPress is powering 25% of all websites. I'm not sure if that's entirely relevant if 15% of those sites are as bad as mine…
After being a long-time Debian user, for some reason I've been going all-in for CentOS lately. It started after I installed it as a virtualization platform with KVM on an E3 server. I just love how stable and methodically planned it is. I've probably gone a little too far, as I'…
So, have you been looking for the IceFilms channel plug-in for your Synology DiskStation, but only seen Windows and Mac OSX referenced for install methods on the sites you've visited? Well, look no further! I installed IceFilms on my Synology DiskStation tonight (which, in reali…
Note: This guide below has been depreciated - now you can just install macports and run: It still installs some xorg dependencies but it links them to the cocoa interface Compiling Gnumeric on Mac OS 10.9.5 using Cocoa instead of X11 Note: No X11 was used in the installation of…
How to fix 3d rendering for a Windows guest in VMWare Workstation 11 Ubuntu 14.10 host Hi all! Getting a message when you start your Windows guest in VMWare Workstation 11 hosted by Ubuntu 14.10? I was, and I had a little trouble finding a fix, until finally it worked! it's simp…
Switching from LXDE to LXQT in Lubuntu 14.10 Utopic Unicorn Hey! So if you're like me, you've been dying to try out the new LXQT Desktop Environment everyone has been talking so much about! But so far, a official release of Lubuntu with LXQT has not been developed. There is an u…
Hey, So perhaps you've figured out that AKAI, EMU, ROLAND, KURTZWEIL sample CD images can't be read on a Mac, can't be mounted on a Mac, and can't be burned on a Mac with the usual included utilities like diskutil or hdiutil, But you'd still like be able to burn your sampler's C…
An easy how-to install guide for Gnumeric on a mac. Gnumeric is a great program for those wishing to migrate from MS Excel but desiring the same functionality and user interface. It's free, easy to use, and even has some improvements with regards to statistical computation. Unfo…
Binchunker is a great command-line utility for converting .bin and .cue format cd-rom backups to .iso format for easy mounting / burning. It also has a .raw and .wav conversion functions for use with video and audio disk images. I've primarily been using it for converting video…